And while these restaurants aren’t for everyone, I assure you this is about more than just grub.

Those chefs, tinkering around with their bulgur wheat and samphire, are creating more than just a plate of scran, they are cooking up aspiration.

It sounds a flight of fancy, but it isn’t.

I have been sat at meetings about how Birmingham can improve its image and the food scene is almost always at the top of the list.

It gets a kicking for being elitist and out of step with the common man or woman, but if you listened to those kind of moaners you’d never get anything done.

The truth is, if Birmingham is to continue its journey of improvement as a city, it has to be a place people aspire to move.

We all know we have our problems – if it isn’t a pocket of deprivation its a jaw of doom. There needs to be another story.

With the likes of HSBC and Deutsche Bank shifting jobs with six-figure salaries here, what would be the point if they all commute in from Oxfordshire?

This comes against a backdrop of the national media, and not least the BBC, considering it as the city they love to ignore.

Manchester, with its Champions League football clubs and bands with funny hair, has been the darling for quite some time.

But this handful of men with their herbs and spices have boosted this city’s reputation in their own way, completely organically. We have a food scene – and there’s only really two food scenes in this country.

In short, the only way Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, and so on, are going to get five Michelin stars is in a particularly outrageous dream.

The addition of Carters of Moseley, named the Midlands’ Restaurant of the Year by Good Food Guide readers last year, is doubly good news for aspirational Birmingham.

The restaurant is the baby of couple Brad Carter, 31, and Holly Jackson, 29, who launched it in November 2010.

For one, it is a place to be proud of, somewhere to take chinless wonders and their bulging pockets, when they visit the city.

But it is also great value - the lunch menu is just £28 - you can’t get much in Nando’s for that never mind a decent restaurant these days.

But also, as I have alluded to, Birmingham needs to be a place to live and work, and this just adds to the story of Moseley being a world-class place for people to live.